People are queuing to access the EPOPIC conference on patent information in Brussels.

Christophe Saam acted as a chairman of the discussion round on « use of blockchain technology for intellectual property », and replied to the many hopes but also fears and doubts that this very hyped technology creates.

Following possible use cases of the technology have been discussed:

Timestamping documents,

Securing NDAs,

Improving royalties collection with smart contracts,

Exchanging assignment documents

Exchanging priority documents

Payment of fees to the patent offices

IP financing

Collaboration projetcs; Financing IP

Communication between applicant and his counsel

Roughly one third of the attendants considered to use blockchain technology within the next 3-5 years in order to timestamp IP related documents (trade secrets, copyrighted work, etc).